CULTURAL QA 06-2023-15A Q1 Why did the first civilizations occuraround river valleys?
A1 Steven Haddock, Studied at YorkUniversity (Canada)Tue It appears that about 12,000 years ago there was amassive worldwide drought. Up tothat point, humans had been pretty widespread and relied on local waterresources. For example, theBushmen, who have lived in the Kalahari Desert for tens of thousands of years,still have dozens of little tricks to extract water from the environment, suchas leaving leaves to pool condensation overnight, or digging up tubers. But as the planetbecame drier, more and more humans started gravitating towards places wherewater was plentiful, and that was rivers fed by large amounts of rain andsnowfall that ran all year without drying up - the Nile, the Yellow, the Tigris& Euphrates, the Indus, and the Ganges. But packing so many people into so small a space came withloads of conflict. Prior to this, people lived inbands that maybe contained 150 people. All of a sudden you might be crowded inwith thousands of people, many of whom you had no relationship with, andalthough they had greater resources the old system of “take everything that’sthere and then move on” stopped working. Independently, several people developed the idea of“agriculture”, taking food and putting it into the ground to make more food.This started to require a lot of organization to make sure that food was savedto plant, to plant it at the right time, to take care of it, to harvest it whenit was ready, and to prepare it for storage during the times it didn’t grow.You also needed to protect your stores of food from invaders. Now, if you’re ahunter/gatherer, you pretty much have to be good at everything. However, inthis new system, specialized skills were needed. You needed soldiers to protectthe food. You needed potters to make the vessels to store your grain. Beforeyou knew it, you needed people who could keep track of everything. Babylonian cuneiform, a writing system from about 6,000B.C.E. and the first type of known document in history. These tablets wereusually records of transactions and contracts for agricultural produce.They were actually produced as clay for a temporary record, but were subject toaccindental fire and became permanent. “Civilization”, which is just a fancy word for “having asociety with people with specialized skills” was a requirement to keep hundredsof thousands of people alive in an area whereusing hunter/gatherer methods may only have been able to support a few tenthousand at most. Q2 Why did Dr. Beeching cut thousands ofmiles of railways in the UK in 1963? A2 Rebecca Ball, Former Retired SolicitorWed He didn’t. Dr Beeching wasasked to report on what changes would be necessary to make British Railwaysprofitable, and that is what he did. It was theBritish government, not Dr Beeching, which decided to cut the thousands ofmiles of railways which Dr Beeching had said would need to be cut in order tomake British Railways profitable. But that was apolitical decision … and Dr Beeching was a civil servant. Civil servants don’ttake political decisions: politicians do. There is, of course, no reason why a nationalised railwaySHOULD be made profitable. The roads aren’t profitable,after all. We spend millions and millions of taxpayers’ money every year onbuilding and maintaining the road network, and the road fund licence paid byevery vehicle owner yields only a small fraction of that. One decision open tothe politicians in light ofDr Beeching’s report was to say “well, the cuts necessary to make the railwaysprofitable are unpalatable. We would rather continue to subsidise railpassengers, just as we subsidise car drivers, and continue to run the railwaysat a loss.” But that was not the decision which the politicianstook. Q3 What are the types of Indian Railwayscoaches? A3 Swagata Sarkar, Moderator &Bootleg Attorney General, Indian Railways Space Jun 7 I have personally seen 3 types of coaches till now, theseare the following: ICF Coaches or INTEGRAL COACH FACTORYCoaches: These were notan indigenous design, they were in fact imported from switzerland way back in1955 fully built and designed by Swiss Car and Elevator Manufacturing Co.in 1955, ICF was establishedin Perambur, Chennai and they started manufacture of the ICF coachesindegenously till 2018when the last ICF coach rolled off the assembly line, giving way to LHBcoaches. ICF coaches weredeveloped into EMU and MEMU and DEMU sets later down the line. ICF coaches were manufactured at ICF Chennai, RCF Kapurthala and BEML atBangalore. Non-AC ICF Coacheshave a maximum operating speed of 110 km/h Premium ICF coachesused in Shatabdi and Rajdhani expresses had a speed of 140 km/h Most commonLiveries were Bleeding Blue (Navy blue body with cream blue Waist) and newlyintroduced Utkrisht livery. ICF coaches are still used on MilitaryTrains carrying army personnel.They use Screw couplers. IRY/IR 20Coaches: RCF Kapurthalaunder assistance of UN made 3 prototype coaches for upgradation of rollingstock used in IR. These were IRY/IR 15, IRY/IR 20 and IRZ/IR 30. Personally, i haveonly seen IRY/IR 20. These coaches were made in relatively large number (twocomplete sets, 1 for Swarna Shatabdi and 1 for Bareilly Shatabdi). Quotedmaximum speed was 140 km/h with potential for 160 km/h. Eurofima bogies withKnorr-Bremse Disk brakes were provided. Only two train sets were made, and they ran forconsiderable time until Bareilly Shatabdi trainset was completely taken off toprovide spare parts for Swarna Shatabdi. Swarna Shatabdi ran with IRY/IR 20 rakes till 2010 and sometimeafter that was replaced by LHB coaches. Why IR did not go ahead withthe design is unknown, but it was said that the coaches were costly tomanufacture.They also used Screw Couplers LHB or LinkeHoffman Busche Coaches: Designed byLHB Germany (now part of Alstom), these coaches were ordered in 1998 tomodernize IR rolling stock. FIAT Bogies (very similar toEUROFIMA). Knorr Bremse Disc brakes. 24 units were Imported units and were tested till 180km/h. Local manufacturing started in 2000. They are made at ICF Chennai, RCFKapurthala and modern coach factory Raebareli. Rated formaximum speed of 160 km/h and non-AC units are rated at 130 km/h. They use CBCcouplers (Type H) and are anti-telescopic, that is, they don't overturn as longas they are coupled to each other. Q4 Why can't metros and suburban railwaysbe merged especially in Kolkata and Chennai (MRTS)? A4 Swagata Sarkar, Moderator &Bootleg Attorney General, Indian Railways Space Jun 3 Kolkata has old ICFbroad gauge metro rakes which can be shifted to Suburban lines and newBombardier Rakes like in Delhi can be brought on metro lines. It's been quite a while since I got an interestingquestion just like this. Well, let’s beginthen. Short answer, they can't be merged becausethey use two very different types of power transmission and collection. Long answer, here we go! Kolkata metroindeed uses broad gauge rolling stock, in fact, they are towed on Normalrailway tracks all the way from ICF, BEML, or the Ports (CRRC Dalin Rakes)using an ICF coach to act as an adapter between the metro’s “Schaku” Couplerand the Locomotive’s CBC coupler. But the similarities end right there.Apart from the same gauge, the Broad guage EMU and the Kolkata Metro havenothing else in common, This also includes the traction equipment. Kolkata metro is electrically powered but unlike the EMUsit uses a system called “Third Rail” to collectelectricity. The system uses a “Third rail” (the other two being the ones onwhich the metro is operating) that runs parallel to the tracks. This rail is painted red to signify that it’s a powered rail i.e. it haselectricity flowing through it. In the case of the Kolkata metro, the supplied voltage is750V DC. Every bogie onKolkata metro’s rolling stock has a collector shoe attached to it. This collector shoe is always incontact with the third rail and acts as the medium through which the trainreceives its power from the powered third rail. This electricity is then passedthrough resistor banks(Series of high capacity resistors ) to control the speed of traction motors byvarying the resistance and then fed to traction motors. In EMUs,it is very different. Indian railways use overhead wires to transmit power toelectric locomotives and also EMUs, the transmission is done at 25KV 50Hz AC. EMUs collect this electricity by using an assembly calledthe "pantograph". The pantograph remains incontact with the overhead wires and thus keeps supplying the EMU withelectricity. This electricity is then fed to a Traction transformer and then toa tap changer that regulates the current and then to a rectifier that converts3-phase AC current into single-phase DC current and then ultimately to Tractionmotors. So now we knowwhy Kolkata metro's old ICF rakes cannot run on the EMU network because theydon't have pantographs and vice versa the EMU network does not have a Thirdrail for them. Now, the bombardier rakes: Bombardiermade rolling stock for DMRC's yellow line, and these can indeed operate on EMUsystems, but they are limited to 8 car rakes and therefore not suitable forsuburban chaos. Bombardier makes traction equipment, and these are beingused to produce EMUs at ICF. These Bombardier rakes arenot like DMRC's shiny silver rakes....in fact they are quite bland. But they use similartechnology, 3 phase traction system, Air conditioning, and better efficiency. Q5 Indian Railway now charges Rs. 60 foran automatic cancelled waitlist ticket. Is it fair? Why does nobody complainagainst it? Why do we pay 60 for not getting a seat?A5 A5 SANJAY JAIN, Jun 5 If there is no charges for cancellation then people will doreservation without any proper travel plan. They willjust make reservation for tentative various dates with a mind set ofcancellation.Thus there willbe a heavy waiting list numbers. Howeverrailway can make it 30 or 40 rs. All the above QA are from Quora website on 15-06- 2023. Quora answers need not be 100% correct answers . Compiled and posted by R. Gopala krishnan, on 15-06-2023 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/2124121433.317628.1686836880987%40mail.yahoo.com.
